A pretty perfect brunch

Brunch gets a bad rap, which makes me sad, especially in the wake of my pretty perfect brunch experience at Camaraderie last weekend. It was terrific. from the ping-pong-ball-sized Swedish pancakes filled with lingonberry jam, to a meticulous lobster omelet and beyond.

Alas, brunch's reputation has suffered ever since Anthony Bourdain dissed the weekend breakfast/lunch amalgam as a repository for leftovers in his 2000 manifesto, Kitchen Confidential. The rap worsened as a generation of op-ed pontificators used brunching as a signifier for a certain class of feckless, bourgeois do-nothings.

Too bad for them. In the right hands—like those of Camaraderie chef Shawn Gawle—brunch can be a thing of beauty, where simple things like eggs, potatoes and pancake batter are transmogrified into something grand. Gawle discontinued his weekly brunches some months back—for reasons beyond my ken, they weren't doing enough business to support the effort he and his staff put into them, But he still stages brunch every couple months and sends out bulletins notifying his social-media and mailing-list stalwarts, which is how I found myself at Camaraderie's Back-to-School brunch last weekend.

At my table were a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old and their parents. We all left stuffed but invigorated, me with a couple of the trembly little Portuguese custard tarts, pastels de nata, that Gawle did so well for the Goodnight Hospitality folks at Montrose Cheese and Wine.

During the course of our meal, with daylight illuminating the natural woods of the cleanly designed, modern dining room, the boys consumed epic quantities of candied bacon—great slabs of the stuff—along with the crunchiest triangular hashed-brown triangles, plus lemon-ricotta pancakes lifted by both the citrus rind and the soft-curded cheese. Oh, and a painstakingly made cardamom bun or two. Gawle's wife is Swedish, which accounts for the menu's Scandinavian touches.

The grown ups oohed over jewel like hunks of compressed melon, their flavors and textures intensified. We aahed over feathery little globes of the Swedish pancakes called Aebleskiver, with their tart cache of lingonberry jam; declared the crab omelet with preserved lemon, spinach and caviar sauce an exemplary specimen; and pronounced the ethereally crusted quiche tartlet a perfect marriage of foresty mushrooms, gentle leeks and umami-rich Comté cheese. That brisk little green salad alongside? Again, just so.

Gawle always has surprises up his sleeve, and ours was shrimp swaddled in parchment-thin wrappers from head to tail and beyond, like a reimagined carapace. These packages crackled and popped, while the sauce that accompanied them was imbued with the subtle sea-taste of their shells. At meal's end, too sated to continue, we managed to make room for junior versions of a new sundae Gawle's has been playing with: popcorn ice cream with salted caramel and staccato flurry of cocoa nibs. Fun!

We left on a happy cloud with the afternoon still stretching before us. So pardon me if I don't go along with the "brunch is uncool" crowd. At Camaraderie, it is that and more. The technique is strong, the ingredients first-rate, the dishes anything but throwaway stuff—from the tricky-to-coax aebleskiver globes fresh from their cast-iron pan, to the tender flanks of the beautifully rolled omelet.

In fact, departing Camaraderie last this past Sunday, I had an uncharitable thought. If there's any one thing that makes me think Houston's Michelin inspectors are out to lunch (okay, there's more than one thing), it's that this talented chef and his ambitious take on modern French-rooted American fare hasn't made the list.

Go figure.